Perform a custom action for Check-in event in Microsoft Team Foundation Server

Introduction 

Microsoft Team Foundation Server is a very powerful and customizable tool user of version control. TFS 2005 is less stable when compared to TFS 2008.

Background 

Now I just faced a legitimate requirement..

When someone checks-in any file to the TFS, I need to get the list of files checked-in and perform a custom action based on that file(s) list. How do I do that??  I just need to extend the Microsoft TFS services. 

Using the code

TFS is nothing but a SQL Server database(s) and a Share Point Web Service. All actions to the TFS are done by calling webservices at http://yourservername:8080/…asmx. So what you need to do is listen for a particular event and then catch it and execute your code. 

You can find the BisSubscribe.exe at –> C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server\TF Setup\.

TFS has a small interesting utility called BisSubscribe.exe, you can use this tool to subscribe to quite a few events in TFS. So, now i want to subscribe to the TFS Checkin-Event, and the command goes like this:

BisSubscribe.exe /server tfsserver01 /eventType CheckinEvent /deliveryType Email /address vinubaby1@gmail.com

This will create a subscription on the tfsserver01 server for CheckIn event and a email will be sent to vinubaby1@gmail.com, but this does not serve my requirement. I need a list of files checked-in the moment it is checked in. So, i just tweak the command like this.

BisSubscribe.exe /server tfsserver01 /eventType CheckinEvent /deliveryType Soap /address http://myserver:81/service.asmx

This command will create a subscription on tfsserver01 server for Checkin event and will invoke the Notify() method in the service.asmx webservice which i developed and published in http://myserver:81/

The webservice will have the Notify command with the following signature:

[SoapDocumentMethod(Action = "http://Microsoft.VisualStudio.Bis/Notify", 
         RequestNamespace = http://Microsoft.VisualStudio.Bis)] 
[WebMethod] 
public void Notify(string eventXml) 
{ 
     //Write your custom code here 
     //Use eventXml to extract event related fields and their values 
}

The signature of the Notify function should be same as above.

Happy programming….. Enjoy..